Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 1943. A PACIFIC OFFENSIVE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 April 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 1943. A PACIFIC OFFENSIVE.

SUGGESTIONS that a limited Allied offensive in the Pacific may synchronise with the opening of the second front in Europe, according to a special correspondent in Sydney, ‘‘have again promoted sharp discussion on the difficulties of dispossessing the Japanese from the islands which they now hold.’’ It is generally conceded, he adds, that further operations on the Guadalcanal pattern will at best be extremely hazardous and expensive.

A rather different view is taken by another commentator who observes that if the comparative losses in every action against Japanese-held islands are balanced as heavily in our favour as at Guadalcanal, action in the southern Pacific will have gone far towards exhausting Japan and that: “One cannot envisage a grand march on Tokio from the islands of the South Pacific, but this area can still germinate some of the seeds of victory.”

It will be remembered that definite views on this question were expressed by President Roosevelt in a radio address delivered after his return from the Casablanca conference.

We do not expect (Mr Roosevelt said on that occasion) to spend the time it would take to bring Japan to final defeat merely by inching our way forward from island to island across the vast expanse of the Pacific. Great and decisive actions against the Japanese will be taken to drive the invader from the soil of China. Important' actions will be taken in the skies over China and over Japan itself. The discussions at Casablanca have been continued in Chungking with the generalissimo by General Arnold and have resulted in definite plans for offensive operations. There are many roads which lead right to Tokio. We shall neglect none of them.

These observations of the President give added interest to recent discussion in the United States as to the lines that may be followed in offensive action against Japan. In Australia attention, has been concentrated largely on the necessity of building up adequate defences against Japan in the South and South-West Pacific and of imposing at the same time the greatest possible- strain and drain upon her resources.

A good many people in the United States, on the other hand, evidently are of opinion that even at the present stage of the world war, with limits imposed meantime on action in the Pacific, effective and telling blows may be struck against the enemy elsewhere than in the island arc he is doing his utmost to strengthen north of Australia. Writing on this subject early last month in the “Christian Science Monitor,” Mr Joseph Harsch observed that where the surest and quickest road to Tokio will lead may have already been decided.

Possibly the staffs are working towards such a decision now (he added). It' could be by way of China. It could also be an amphibious operation sweeping far around the outer Japanese screen of islands* and coming in, where? —perhaps the coast of China, perhaps the Philippines, perha'ps Borneo. The purpose would be to cut in behind the Japanese island defence ring and leave it hanging like a severed vine to wilt and droop of its own weight. That some such course is more plausible than hacking through an endless series of Guadalcanal must be as obvious to the Japanese as it is to the Allied leaders. Therefore they would logically reinforce their island front, but begin to turn their offensive and even major defensive thoughts in other directions.

Action on the lines here sketched would be welcomed nowhere more heartily, it may be supposed, than in Australia and New Zealand. It is to some extent, at least, in default of better things that Australian Ministers and others have been pleading for the greatest practicable addition to the air and other forces at the disposal of General MacArthur in the South-West Pacific. Apart from Allied resources being concentrated primarily at present on the war in Africa and Europe and at sea, it greatly affects the general outlook in the Pacific that for some months to come the monsoon in Burma is likely to make impracticable offensive action on any great scale in and through that country. It is evidently desirable that the most should be made of any possibility that may exist even in these conditions of getting around and behind the Japanese arc of island-defences.